Donne’s Hawkings

In this article, I use Donne’s offhand description of composition as hawking as the basis for a consideration of his depictions of the motions and trajectories of the writing mind. I examine Donne’s descriptions of the mental processes of writing in three different sites—in the study, on horseback, and beside the family hearth—in his letters and poetry, focusing in particular on three poems that exemplify each physical location: “Satire One,” “Goodfriday, 1613. Riding Westward,” and “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.”